On the effectiveness of prison as punishment

Criminology & Public Policy

Frontiers in Psychology, 2023

Scholars have proposed that incarceration rates might be reduced by a requirement that judges justify incarceration decisions with respect to their operational costs (e.g., prison capacity). In an Internet-based vignette experiment (N =), we tested this prediction by examining whether criminal punishment judgments (prison vs. probation) among university undergraduates would be influenced by a prompt to provide a justification for one's judgment, and by a brief message describing prison capacity costs. We found that () the justification prompt alone was su cient to reduce incarceration rates, () the prison capacity message also independently reduced incarceration rates, and () incarceration rates were most strongly reduced (by about %) when decision makers were asked to justify their sentences with respect to the expected capacity costs. These e ects survived a test of robustness and occurred regardless of whether participants reported that prison costs should influence judgments of incarceration. At the individual crime level, the least serious crimes were most amenable to reconsideration for probation. These findings are important for policymakers attempting to manage high incarceration rates.

Evropský politický a právní diskurz, 2024

This paper deals with a panoptic carceral state of the XXI century, whose functions are reduced to maximum social control through the wide use of imprisonment and quasiimprisonment practices and the spread of non-institutional forms of restriction of freedom (including non-punitive ones). The methodology of the research is based on works of Rusche, Kirchheimer, Melossi, Pavarini, Foucault, Cohen, Bauman, Albrecht and other scholars. Proposing the ideas of "quasi-deviant", "the carceral state" and "penological pessimism", the author analyses the priority of "protection of the society from deviants" in public policies in the XXI century, simulacraisation of measures of "protection of the society" and lowering the threshold of deviance. The aims of the research are to analyse: 1) the nature of contemporary penal practices; 2) the justification of punishment; 3) how social control spreads in the XXI century; 4) how the boundaries between imprisonment and non-institutional applications of imprisonment as well as between punishments and non-punitive forms of social control blur; 5) how the tension between "freedom" and "security" develop. The research covers such issues as 1) clarification of the content of the terms "prison policy" and "social control" in the XXI century; 2) political and economic nature of new trends in social control policies and practices; 3) global consequences on crime prevention, sentencing and prison policies; 4) probable scenarios for the evolution of social control policies in the global and national dimensions; 5) the concept of a quasi-deviant as a special new collective object of social control; 6) penological pessimism as a fundamental characteristic of social control policy and practices; 7) growing supranational nature of modern prison policy; 8) institutional violence in the XXI century.

Annual Review of Criminology, 2023

The literature on the prevalence and causes of punishment has been dominated by research into the United States. Yet most of the world's prisoners live elsewhere, and the United States is no longer the country with the world's highest incarceration rate. This article considers what we know about the prevalence and causes of incarceration around the world. We focus on three features of incarceration: level, inequality, and severity. Existing comparative research offers many insights, but we identify methodological and theoretical shortcomings. Quantitative scholars are still content to draw causal inferences from correlations, partly because (like qualitative scholars) they are often limited to studying the present and the developed world. More data will allow better inferences. We close by defending the goal of building precise and generalizable theories of punishment.

Social & Legal Studies, 2018

This introduction presents a collection of papers by Alan Norrie, Craig Reeves, Susanne Karstedt, Tiffany Bergin, Michael Koch, Mary Bosworth, Anastasia Chamberlen, Henrique Carvalho and Anita Dockley. It briefly discusses the origins of this collaborative research project, and outlines the theme, aims and format of the special issue, which calls for an interdisciplinary, theoretically informed and conceptually and practically critical examination of punishment today. It then provides a summary of the approach and argument of each of the contributions to the issue and offers a few reflections on ways forward.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

A central and recurring concern in various theories of punishment is how one should define it. Sociological and psychological theories try to analyse what should be the purpose of punishment. The two global perspectives- prison as criminology and prison as preventive deterrent may be correct. But the subjectivity lies in socioeconomic conditions, and legal environment. This paper will try to analyze definition of punishment with focusing on various theories. Further, the effects of imprisonment, both psychological and social, has been discussed. The conclusion is not sufficiently firm to guide policy generally, though it casts doubt on claims that imprisonment has strong specific deterrent effects.

The age-old debate about what constitutes just punishment has become deadlocked. Retributivists continue to privilege desert over all else, and consequentialists continue to privilege punishment's expected positive consequences, such as deterrence or rehabilitation, over all else. In this important intervention into the debate, Leo Zaibert argues that despite some obvious differences, these traditional positions are structurally very similar, and that the deadlock between them stems from the fact they both oversimplify the problem of punishment. Proponents of these positions pay insufficient attention to the conflicts of values that punishment, even when justified, generates. Mobilizing recent developments in moral philosophy, Zaibert offers a properly pluralistic justification of punishment that is necessarily more complex than its traditional counterparts. An understanding of this complexity should promote a more cautious approach to inflicting punishment on individual wrongdoers and to developing punitive policies and institutions.

On the Normative Significance of Public Opinion, 2014